Personal Life
He was born and grew up in Woore, Shropshire, close to Madeley, Staffordshire and was educated at the Madeley School. His father was a son of a yeoman farmer of Woore, who moved to London where he worked his way from a journeyman to master. His principal business was that of supplying leather to coachmakers from a shop in Dean Street, Soho. In due course Adams was apprenticed to the coach making firm of Baxter & Pierce of Long Acre, London. This was a well known firm and during his time with the company Napoleon's travelling carriage was brought there, after the battle of Waterloo, and Bridges Adams made a drawing of it.
In December 1819 he married Elizabeth Place the daughter of Francis Place the social reformer. Together they set out on a voyage to find their fortunes in a warmer climate. In 1820 they left for Valparaiso in Chile. In Valparaiso he was employed to manage Lord Cochrane's estate, for a salary of £200 per year. In 1821 he had a son, William Alexander Adams. The family survived the earthquake in Valparaiso of 19 November 1822. Elizabeth died on 8 August 1823, when giving birth to a second child, who also died. Following this tragedy Bridges Adams returned to England, with his son, by a long trek over the Andes to Buenos Aires and by ship back to London, via Falmouth, in 1826. After a further trip to the United States, Bridges Adams settled in London and took a position in the firm of Hobson & Co, Coachmakers.
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“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
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